Anyway, interesting subject Bassist. Do you live in SA? Have you ever lived in SA?
I lived in SA for a long time before emigrating to the UK at the beginning of 2019, and yeah, the lifestyle is great.
It is a combination of a few things. The first is that the climate is fantastic. When you live in the UK, and you have days where the maximum temperature is 20 degrees in the height of summer, you appreciate how good you had it in SA.
That good weather has an effect on your mood and happiness - you always want to do something.
Then there is the sheer amount of space. Houses are huge, flats are huge, gardens are huge, everything is huge. Space quite literally for Africa.
The important part of this is that if you are earning a middle class income or above in SA, you can afford a house or flat that by UK standards would be amazing. Lots of professionals in London have to compromise - it isn't unusual to have people in their 30s sharing because they can't afford to live alone. So, it is much cheaper to get a nice place to live in SA. This affects your day to day life - it has a huge impact.
I have to sacrifice a lot of my income to have a nice place to live in, and even then I am renting and not buying. It is kak expensive over here.
Then there is the natural beauty of SA - lots of beautiful national parks and open spaces. Again, goes back to climate and open space - just so much to do, so much beauty to be had.
The last point is that, if you are born in SA, you tend to have strong social networks there. This gives you a lot of people that you can interact with and bond with. If you emigrate, you no longer have those networks, and it can take a long time to build networks up again. You sacrifice on your social life big time. This relates to the parts about climate and open space - you have people you like spending time with in places where you like being.
As to whether people live on credit and drive cars they can't really afford - yes but that isn't limited to SA. That happens in the UK too. People spend absurd amounts of money renting tiny little rooms in the heart of the city instead of paying less and living further away. It is just a modern thing - people do it. It doesn't mean that SA is fake or that people are fake or that anyone who says they are happy in SA is fake.
For every yuppie driving a GTI, there are ten Kobus's, William's, Sipho's and Rajiv's who just like taking their family to the dam on a weekend and having a braai next to the water. That's all it takes to have a good time in SA - a braai and a beer. When your standard for happiness is as low as that, you tend to be happy a lot.
Now, the downsides, the reason I moved away, is the ANC government and the future of the country. If I'm right, being able to afford beers and braais is going to get a lot more difficult. Finding roads that you can drive on to get to the dam is going to be a lot more difficult. Finding a dam that isn't polluted with sewage is going to be impossible.
Even worse than that, if I ever had children in SA, I don't know what kind of education they could get. I don't know what would happen if my wife went into labour - would NHI force us to wait in a queue for 2 months before she can give birth? If my child was premature, could they get the care they needed?
So that's the problem. Yes, the lifestyle is amazing. I will never deny that. But there are still problems.
Some good points to which I agree. Yeah I lived in SA but moved out and am experiencing exactly the challenges you mention, with living overseas away from SA. You're pressed for space, lower living standards in terms of luxury and nature, and you pretty much have to start from scratch in terms of friends, networks and employment. No-one cares what car you drive (or what you drove in SA), or whatever accomplishments you achieved in some wasted African country like SA.
The shenanigans with the ANC government is irrelevant until it directly affects YOU. That means they do stuff (or DON'T do anything) which causes you to lose your job, or your life to become unaffordable, or you or your family gets attacked or robbed. In this sense, I have so many contacts in SA to who this has never happened before, and they have set themselves up in such a way that it will take a LOT of screw-ups from the government before they eventually might be remotely affected. How do they do this? From what I can tell:
1) They have jobs in an industry where there will always be good opportunities, like maybe IT, in SA.
2) Even if (1) above fails, they are diverse enough to do something else, like making money from a side hobby they've always had, or joining a business partnership from a friend or family member.
3) They know how to save, so that when inflation hits harder, or the government starts printing money, they have a cushion, or they have already invested in foreign assets or currencies. They even have friends in Europe or US who keep money for them there. They also have friends or contacts where they can buy stuff cheaper, like friends with home gardens (vegetables), building materials, etc.
4) They apply common sense in terms of safety. And they live in safe areas, or in an area where there are good neighbourhood watches. When they go out they hang around in places where it is relatively safe. When travelling for weekends away, they travel in car groups (e.g. 2 families in 2 cars) so if one car breaks down, the other can help. They even know friends in every town they drive through which will come help when called upon! Because the police is unreliable/useless. Long distance they don't drive through the night, so they stay over in towns along the way, at friends' places for free.
As for education, they go to normal schools (not private). For university, they go overseas and study overseas because they worked at uncle Koos's car garage while they were young so they could save to go overseas and overseas while studying they also work because some friend or family member got them a contact for a side job close to the particular university overseas where they will be staying. All in all, they are able to fund their overseas study, and maybe even get a job there. Or return to SA and step into a nice job at some company because a friend's friend got them a nice opportunity there.
What have all of us done to promote a life like above for us or our children?
Have you done enough to foster friendships and make the right picks for friends, and contacts, that are so crucial in the above scenarios I have sketched?
If others could, why could you or me not also?
BEFORE deciding to leave SA?
